


5 Times They Definitely Didn't Know

by winchysteria



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: 5+1 Things, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-10
Updated: 2016-06-10
Packaged: 2018-07-14 04:25:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7153439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winchysteria/pseuds/winchysteria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>5+1, as requested by <a href="http://betterbittybootybureau.tumblr.com/post/145665631484/okay-so">this post on tumblr</a> where everyone is secretly dating but they all think they're original and secret. otherwise known as 6 times the samwell men's hockey team were dumb and i still loved them</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Times They Definitely Didn't Know

**Author's Note:**

> this took so long i died and am posting from the beyond. its so messy and the end makes no sense but i am Tired  
> [here i am on tumblr!](http://winchysteria.tumblr.com/)

1.

Eric Richard Bittle has been happy before. He's been all kinds of happy. Ruthlessly happy, after every successful competition, every check withstood or goal made. Hysterically happy, after being accepted to Samwell. A kind of happiness he's not been able to pin down, one that's slow and consistent and rising like a sheet of hot air, which is rare-- after his moo-maw told him he could teach her a thing or two, and after coming out for the first time. He doesn't really know what to expect from the moments after Jack kisses him.

The thing that expands in his ribcage as he sits in the empty Haus can only be described as  _brutal:_ a marriage of shock and sorrow and honest-to-god joy. He's been battered with strong emotions all day, after all. He's terrified of going home, nostalgic for the year past, proud of Shitty and Jack, grieving to see them go, and now overwhelmed with the  _everything_ of realizing that the space between himself and Jack was not uncrossable. The happiness of knowing exactly where Jack's hands had been on his jaw and waist and palm has spines, and it takes up a lot of space.

When you've been crying and you don't know what else to do, you can't help but cry. When a handsome, serious boy is texting you things that start with  _I meant_ and  _I hope,_ you can't help but press a hand to your chest. When you're completely hollowed out and Jack Zimmermann is trying to send you emoticons from underneath the restaurant table he's sitting at with his parents, you can't help but laugh. Bitty has settled into hysterics when he hears something crash in hallway.

"Hello?" he asks, in a voice too rusty and ineffective to carry.

 _"Calm down, bro,"_ someone mutters from around the corner. The voice is familiar, but Bitty's still not functioning at full capacity.

 _"Dude, why,"_ someone else replies.

It takes Bitty two tries to get out of Chowder's desk chair. He's foggy, but he thinks to flatten his hair and wipe under his eyes. Whoever is in the hallway is still breathing heavily and thudding periodically.

"Hello?" he tries again, walking hesitantly to Chowder's doorway.

There's an  _oh shit_ and another thud and when Bitty steps into the hallway, it's just Ransom and Holster. Ransom leans pseudo-casually against the wall, putting his flatbill back on. Holster's got a death grip on the right strap of Ransom's tank top, and his other hand hovers awkwardly in the air between them. They're both looking at Bitty like he just crawled out of his own grave. 

 _Oh Jesus,_ _do I have stubble burn?_ Bitty thinks, trying not to look shifty.

Ransom clears his throat, says "Heeeey, Bits," in a half-squeak.

"What are y'all doing back here?" Bitty asks.

"We were just, uh," Holster starts. "Are _you_ okay, dude?"

That's suspicious enough to register on Bitty's groggy radar, but he still straightens his sweatshirt defensively. He gives them a once-over, urging his brain to hurry up-- Holster's hand is still hanging in the air, they're both red in the face, and it looks like they've knocked over a hockey stick and an entire stack of Shitty's boxes. "Are y'all fighting?" he asks, tone just a little acidic. "That's not very captain-ly of you."

Holster barks out a laugh. Ransom gives him a sharp look.

"I'm _serious,_ " Bitty continues, desperately holding onto his thread. "If y'all're having problems, you'll throw off the whole team."

They're still looking at each other rather than him, so he takes the opportunity to take another swipe under his eyes. "You could be right about that," Holster says carefully.

"Yo, Bits, I think someone's calling you," Ransom cuts in. 

Bitty looks down at his phone screen, which flashes "JACK" back at him. "Oh, um, that's just my mama," he says nervously. "I'd better- I'd better pick up, right? Y'all can figure this out on your own, you're Ransom and Holster, okay, bye-  _heeey_ ," he says, swiping to answer the call and darting into his own room in one motion.

He's not paying attention when Ransom whispers, too loudly, "He doesn't know, does he?"

* * *

2. 

Larissa didn't think there was any reason to be ashamed of getting laid, but she had also thought she would be able to avoid the whole walk of shame thing. If you're dating somebody in Boston, you don't have to rock smudged eyeliner and someone else's t-shirt halfway across Samwell. Especially if you've already got a drawer in _somebody_ 's apartment, and _somebody_  keeps makeup wipes under their sink for you. But it's all kind of moot when you drive a 1992 Pintara that likes to make horrifying noises at you on the highway at eleven in the morning.

"Thanks for doing this, Dex, seriously," Lardo says, perched on the hood of the sedan in the next parking space.

"Don't worry about it, marm," Dex replies from wherever he is inside the engine. He's muffled, but she can still hear the smirk in his voice.

"I get it, I'm a helpless old lady, ha-ha. And I can't even hit back with my killer sexy tow-truck driver jokes, because you're genuinely saving my ass."

A laugh bubbles out from behind Lardo. "I could make 'em," Nursey says.

"You're welcome to leave anytime, Nurse," Dex snipes back.

When he pulls back a little from the engine block, Lardo can see the back of his neck blushing scarlet. She's not enough of an asshole to point it out, but she still thinks it's funny whenever Dex tries to banter through his bashfulness. He's gotten better at it, for sure. He made a big leap forward at some point this summer.

"Ooh, bend over a little farther, young man, I think the problem's at the  _back_ of the engine," Nursey coos, leaning out the driver's side window.

Lardo cackles over Dex's groaning, reaching back to high-five Nursey through his windshield. "Shut the fuck up, Nursey, you don't even need to be here." Dex lifts his head from under the hood. "Lardo, if I fix your car, will you love me enough to drive me home?"

"Of course, bro," Lardo replies easily, picking at her nail polish.

"See? You could be in your room jerking off to Byron in, like, ten minutes."

"Our room, Freckles." Nursey leans out the window again to make kissy noises. "And  _as if_ I would ever voluntarily read Byron."

Lardo missed them over the summer. She missed them a lot.

She leans back against the windshield and flips her sunglasses down. "I gotta admit, dudes, out of everybody, I would never have thought you guys'd wanna shack up together."

There's a clang, like something hitting metal, and then Dex cursing.

"So, um, Lardo, what were you out driving for?" Nursey says quickly.

She freezes, opens her eyes under the sunglasses. "I was, uh, grabbing some stuff from home. You know, making sure I didn't miss anything moving in. And my mom kept feeding me rượu đế, so I just, you know, slept there."

"Oh, cool," Nursey replies, and Lardo relaxes. "So-- wait, aren't you from Milford?"

Lardo tenses up again. "Yes?" she says, hesitantly.

"That's, like, an hour the other way from campus. How'd you get here?"

She doesn't want to look back at Nursey, but in her peripheral vision she can see Dex studying her. She tries to account for all of her hickeys. The one on the right side of her neck is covered by her hair, because Shitty's just considerate that way. None of them are high enough to peek out from the neckline of her tank top, but she hitches it up just in case. And she's wearing shorts long enough to cover up the rest of them.

 "Sometimes, I just, I'm a shitty navigator," she says belatedly.

Both of the boys snicker at her. She turns to stick a hand through the drivers-side window and smack Nursey on the back of his head. "I'm still in charge of you fuckers," she says, fishing for a chirp. "Maybe I'll fix this myself and send you both home to read Whitman or whatever."

Interestingly, it's Dex who startles, smacking his head on the underside of her hood again.

* * *

 

3.

Derek is pretty drunk. Not a _lot_ drunk. Not as drunk as Tango, who he feels a little bad for abandoning after he held his legs for one of the most unbelievable kegstands this year, but drunk enough to leave Tango in Chowder's cheerfully sober hands and sneak up to the bathroom. He's, like, hoist-your-boyfriend-onto-the-bathroom-sink-and-make-out-with-him drunk, but not actually-hook-up-in-the-bathroom drunk.

Dex is apparently actually-hook-up-in-the-bathroom drunk.

"Will, babe, I am  _not_ removing any clothing in this disgusting place," he protests, pulling Dex's hands away from his fly and putting them in his back pockets instead. Which brings Dex forward a little, and now he's grazing his teeth down Nursey's neck, and  _that's_ pretty nice and he can feel Dex against him through his jeans and maybe he is hook-up-in-the-bathroom drunk. Maybe.

"Sounds like you need to _chill_ , Der," Dex murmurs, punctuating it with a warning bite to the skin under Nursey's jaw.

"Shut the fuck up," Nursey says.

He can feel Dex shrug. "Okay."

And that's doing the opposite of what it was supposed to-- _that_ feels like a hickey, right where his neck meets his collarbone, but it's not in Nursey to protest. He tilts his head toward his right shoulder, and when he tugs on Dex's hair the noise Dex makes four inches from his ear starts him considering the gray areas of the term "hook up." Nursey is not totally planning to pull Dex any closer, but his belt loops are _right there_  and it sort of happens anyway. And then there are long legs wrapped around him, locking him in.

Sold.

He kisses Dex again, a not-messing around kiss that has every inch of them pressed together, and draws the nails that he grows out supposedly to be able to play classical guitar down Dex's back. This is when things even out a little bit, when Dex is the one who can't shut up, and Nursey can't say he doesn't glow with pride over every shudder and whine.

Then the doorknob starts jiggling.

 _"Fuck, fuck, fuck,_ um--" Nursey drops to his knees, which makes Dex shake his head frantically until Nursey shuffles over in front of the toilet. They have a frantic two-second silent conversation, and then the door's opening, and there's Ransom poking his head through the doorway, shutter shades sliding down his nose. "Oh, hey bros," he says, startled.

"Hey," Dex says back, pointing finger guns at the new arrival.

"'Suh, dude," Nursey groans from where he's leaning over the toilet.

Ransom smiles blearily. "Dude, _suh._ " Nursey would place him somewhere in between Dex and himself in terms of drunkenness. "Havin' a rough night?"

"I'll be okay, man. Tub juice, y'know?"

"But I got him," Dex interjects quickly. "Don't worry about it or. Or whatever."

"Cool," Ransom says, nodding hard enough that his shades clatter to the floor. "Oops. Uh, Dex, you mind closing your legs a sec?"

"What?" Dex squeaks. "I mean, um--"

"Shit, sorry dude, I mean, I just have to get into that cabinet under you. Can you--"

"Sure--"

Ransom stands up unsteadily, box of condoms in hand.

"Oh, _shit_ ," Nursey says. "Who's that for?"

"Holster." Ransom gapes, then snaps his mouth shut, giving a sway that seems a little contrived. "I mean, y'know--"

"You're a good wingman, bro," Nursey says, squinting up at them. Ransom looks edgy, like he suspects what Samwell's D-men are getting up to tonight, and Dex is doing a poor job of hiding his panic. "If you don' wanna sleep on the couch, y'can use our--"

Dex kicks him.

"I'm good, bro, gonna, uh, leave you to your ralphing." Ransom fumbles his glasses back onto his face, slams the door behind him, which doesn't catch.

As it floats back open, Nursey  _just_ sees Ransom's feet disappearing into the attic.

* * *

 

4.

Adam isn't the least-stressed person on campus during reading week, but he's okay. He might procrastinate too much, but he definitely handles things better than Ransom, who slept in the library last night and hasn't eaten yet today, as far as Holster knows.

It's a good thing he knows Ransom's Chipotle order like the back of his hand.

The place is pretty crowded, as per usual during Hell Week, which is why he doesn't see Shitty right away. That and the fact that Shitty's got his coat collar turned up, and is facing directly away from Holster, and is-- looking a little shifty? Is that just a different dude with long hair?

"Yo, Shitty," he says at a cautious volume.

"Oh, hey!" Shitty says, not very casually, as he finally turns around. "Holster! Dude! What's up?"

The enthusiasm registers a little forced, and Holster feels kind of insulted even as Shitty reels him in for a hug. "Not much, bro," Holster says, brushing it off. "I didn't know you'd be around today!"

"Yeah, I'm just--" Shitty's eyes land somewhere past Holster's shoulder. "Jack?"

Holster whips around. "Jack?!" he echoes.

"Shitty? Holster? What are you guys-- I mean-- hey!"

There are a few more stilted hugs, before the conversation falls to silence. "So, um, I didn't know you would be in town," Jack says to Shitty. It sounds a little accusatory. Holster winces.

Shitty lifts his arms defensively. "Bro, I didn't know  _you_ would be in town."

"Well, I didn't know either of you would be in town, so." Holster physically feels the tension seeping into him, and it makes him too anxious to come up with anything less confrontational. "Anyway, I need to get a burrito bowl for-- for Rans."

"He in coral reef mode?" Shitty asks.

"Yep."

They follow him into line, and the conversation dies again. Holster feels kind of bad, so he turns to Jack. "I wouldn't think your nutritionist would let you get chain Mexican food, dude."

"She doesn't," Jack says with a shrug. "I'm getting it for-- I'm helping Bitty with his French exam, and I, uh, bribed him with this. Because he keeps getting, um. Distracted." Jack blushes deeply and falls silent.

Holster's exasperation grows, but he holds out the olive branch to Shitty, too. "What about you? Aren't you, like, morally opposed to Chipotle or whatever?"

Shitty chuckles. "Only when I'm high and I really want Qdoba, man. But I'm, this is for Lardo? She's been in the studio for like fourteen hours and I needed a study break anyway."

"So you drove from Harvard," Jack says. "Sure."

"And you drove from Providence," Shitty snaps back. "Sure."

Holster clenches and unclenches his fists, nerves thrumming. "Donkey," he adds.

That, they all laugh at.

* * *

 

5.

Chris had a great first semester, he honestly did. He got another shutout. Living in the Haus was incredible. He found another best friend in Tango. Farmer is a dream come true every day, even the ones where they're angry at each other. But something is just-- off, with the team as a whole.

It's rare that Chowder puts his foot down off the ice. So when he insists they're together for New Year's Eve, they listen, and not just because Chowder has the farthest to go. Ransom, Holster, Lardo, Bitty, Nursey, Dex, and even Tango and Whiskey say they'll come up to Samwell a few days early. He texts Jack and Shitty, too, not hopeful, but they both say yes as well. Farmer, because she's the  _best,_ comes with him.

He hopes that a night of camaraderie and togetherness will bring them all back in, and at first it seems to work okay. They start drinking champagne before five, thanks to Shitty, who lifted it from the swanky setup his parents had for their party. Tempered by Bitty's ability to sidetrack, Tango draws Jack into an animated conversation about the Civil War and the Habs. Whiskey and Shitty get along surprisingly well, and after about ten minutes their discussion of the flaws in the US tax structure is far too complicated for anyone else to get involved in.

It's not totally  _there_ , though. For reasons Chowder really can't parse out, things are just tense. Nobody's fighting, but nobody's completely relaxed either, and the group conversation comes in fits and starts. It feels like there's a dam somewhere, in the things they used to willingly share with each other, and everyone's uncomfortably pushing up against it. He's relieved when the beer pong table comes out, but not even Ransom and Lardo can get completely into it until Farmer turns out to have a knack for the game and they start coaching her.

"I think you were right, Chris," Farmer says when they settle into the couch together around eleven-thirty. She's eyeing Bitty, who's pink-cheeked and giggling at Demi Lovato's Times Square performance. "There's something going on. They're keeping their distance for some reason. I just don't know--  _oh._ "

She goes still. Chowder taps her knees, which are sprawled over his lap. "Farmer. Farmer. Caitlin. What were you gonna say? Farmer!"

" _Oh,_ " she says again, simply.

"Babe. Farmer. Caitlin. _Farmer-_ "

"Chris, do you trust me?" she interrupts him. 

She has her mid-game look on, her winning-play sharpness, and he nods enthusiastically. He would trust her with the Presidency.

"Okay, then just wait. Go along with what I'm gonna say later, I promise I'll explain everything."

God, Farmer is smart.

The party stumbles on for another twenty minutes, everyone but Whiskey, who doesn't drink, crosses the line from buzzed to tipsy. They're piled together around the room, chatting, as the countdown starts. When she hears  _fifty-nine!,_ Farmer scrambles to her feet, standing like a founding father with one foot planted on the cushion next to Chowder and the other up on the arm of the couch. " _PEOPLE!"_ she thunders in her assistant-captain voice.

Everyone jumps, turns to look at her. "I know I am but an in-law to this beautiful family," she says, "but I care about its happiness. And I have proven myself on the battlefield of the pong table, and I hope you can have faith in me now."

Fifty. Forty-nine. The room is rapt. She wobbles a little bit, hiccups, keeps going.

"Here's the thing. Before anybody sneakily gets up to go secretly kiss anybody else in a bathroom, or a closet, or the kitchen, whatever, I propose that we stay in here and kiss together."

The room is dead silent. Forty-one, forty.

She screws up her face for a second, then throws her hand into the air like someone's going to call on her. "I mean, we kiss whoever we've _been_ kissin' in here. Situate yourselves properly, so that when they all go  _New Year, ahhhhh_ on television, I can turn these lights off and you can mack on each other. I'll yell when I'm gonna turn the lights back on so you have time to separate and keep your shit private. Probably like ten seconds."

Farmer looks down at Chowder, who's gaping. Twenty-five, twenty-four. "I kinda feel like kissing him for ten seconds, so we'll do that. Anyway, anybody wanna try it?"

The team looks around at each other anxiously. They seem as bemused as Chowder, but starting with Lardo, they all assent.

" _COOL BEANS!"_ Farmer shouts again, before screaming along with the countdown.

At ten, they're all silent. At nine, they start to move around. At eight, Shitty and Bitty begin to chant with Farmer. By six, they're all still eyeing each other, but everyone's yelling in unison. Chowder's heart is pounding. Farmer reaches for the light switch.

 _"HAPPY NEW YEAR!"_ they roar, and the room goes black.

It's the most confusing ten seconds of Chowder's life. Before Farmer pulls him in, he catches a glimpse of bodies colliding in the dim blue light of the TV. And then he's kissed to within an inch of his life, which is one of his favorite things about Caitlin Farmer, and it's wonderful and she's spinning him around clumsily and then he's colliding with her cheekbone rather than her mouth as she turns to yell "SEPARATE! AND _\-- LIGHTS!"_

Chowder rubs his ringing right ear as the lights buzz in protest, then flicker back on. 

When he looks around, everyone but Whiskey and Tango looks a little like he feels. Dazed, flushed, rabidly curious. A little bit steamrolled by Caitlin Farmer. Jack coughs into the silence.

"Um," Dex starts. "Who wants to drink champagne and not talk about this?"

The dam bursts.

Hours later, when everyone's stumbled off to bed, Chowder curls tightly around his girlfriend, nose buried in her hair. He knows she's still awake because she's giggling as he traces patterns into her palms. "Hey, Farmer?" he whispers.

"Yeah?"

"I think the team's back. Thanks."

Farmer pulls his knuckles up to her lips, kisses them, smiles. "I know."

* * *

 

1.

Bitty wakes to the smell of pancakes.

That's kind of weird.

But he's  _so_ hungover, and his confusion is overtaken by how badly he wantsthe mystery pancakes. Jack's head is snugged up under his chin, so Bitty only has to lean over a little to whisper directly into his ear. "Hey, sweetheart."

Jack makes a noise of protest. Bitty digs his fingertips into Jack's shoulders just slightly. "Jack, there are pancakes."

He moves, finally, and Bitty pulls his head back to see his boyfriend's eyes crack open unhappily. They both have terrible morning breath. Jack's hair is a mess and his face is just a little puffy, and Bitty feels  _disgusting_ , but also content. "Morning, handsome."

"Bitty, _why_."

"Jack, _pancakes_."

Jack grumbles a little, for show, then kisses the soft underside of Bitty's chin. "Do you still want to do what we talked about last night, Bits?"

Bitty nods. "Do you?"

"Yeah, I am."

When they stumble downstairs, Nursey is already up, sitting at the breakfast bar and speaking quietly to Whiskey. "There's no pressure to say anything if you're not ready," Bitty hears before Whiskey turns and sees him.

"Good morning, Bittle," Whiskey says, way too chipper. He's assured them multiple times that he likes to be called Whiskey, but he still hasn't had much like breaking the boarding-school habit of using surnames for everybody else.

He is also the source of the mysterious pancakes, which Bitty loves him for. "Mornin', Whiskey. Are these--"

"Yeah, you can eat 'em," Whiskey says, flicking the last few off the griddle. His perkiness is a convincing argument for never drinking again. "I was gonna go see if anybody else was awake and wanted some."

He takes off his apron, which Bitty had insisted on getting for him when he started cooking at the Haus, and heads upstairs with a pancake in hand. Bitty and Jack are left standing in the kitchen with Nursey. They don't talk much, but the silence is mild. Dex shuffles in from the living room, Tango from the hallway where he'd holed up under the beer pong table, and everyone else descends in pairs, which nobody really acknowledges. They crowd around the table, sharing chairs and squeezing hip-to-hip. It's blindingly white outside, several inches of last night's new snow resting on top of the icier gray layer that had been solidifying for weeks.

By the time they're at least semi-alive and have destroyed the stock of pancakes, they're just waiting for it to come up. Bitty grits his teeth and squeezes Jack's hand under the table. "Hey y'all?" he says quietly.

The low murmur of conversation dies.

"I have something I wanna tell y'all. I guess-- me and Jack have something to tell y'all. And this cannot,  _cannot_ go beyond this room. We haven't told anyone at all besides Jack's parents and George, and it needs to stay that small."

He looks around, channeling his moo-maw's best iron stare. Everyone nods assent.

"Okay, good." He smiles, finally, because it already feels like an anvil's been lifted off his chest. "Jack and I, we, um--"

Bitty's voice is getting tight. Jack's looking steadily at him, and when they lock eyes, Jack understands. He lifts their intertwined hands above the table.

The reaction is immediate and effusive. There are tears pricking at the corner of Bitty's eyes, and at the onslaught of  _since when_ and  _how_ and  _so happy_ he smiles so wide they start to fall. They answer the questions as best they can, trading off, beaming at each other with total relief. The conversation is a flurry, unpredictable, but when it starts to quiet Bitty notices Lardo's pensive expression.

"Bits, did you say the day of graduation?"

"Sure, why?"

Lardo looks stunned, then the corners of her eyes crinkle, and then she loses it. "It's just--" she tries to say through her snorts. "Me and Shits--"

" _No_ ," Bitty says delightedly.

"Not kidding," Shitty adds. "After you guys, though, I guess. It was like-- well, I went out for lunch with my parents-- Lardo, do you wanna tell it or do I?"

In the way they always do, Lardo and Shitty throw strands of the story back and forth to each other, adding in bits as they remembered, with smiles more unguarded than Bitty can ever remember them being. As far as he can tell, through the mess of conversation and the cross-crossing laughter, Shitty went out for lunch with his family, and Lardo climbed the tree Shitty had been found naked in, for old time's sake. He lasted an hour with his grandparents before leaving the restaurant and striding back to campus.

"It was a great gesture," Lardo interjects here. "Took him like two hours, though."

There was a speech, because it's Shitty, and then he had to climb the tree to kiss her, because it's Lardo, and then they went back out for better food. "It was good," Shitty says. "The food, I mean. The kiss was fucking cosmic." They still look at each other, Bitty thinks, like best friends. Not like either of them hung the moon, but like they're together in the spaceship on the way there.

"So, uh, about graduation," Holster says, when  _that_ hubbub dies down.

"You're fucking joking," Lardo says, before her eyes light on Nursey slowly raising his hand. "This is  _unreal._ "

Tango sits back, shaking his head, muttering about being too ace for this. Whiskey pats him sympathetically on the shoulder.

It's total chaos for a while. Ransom and Holster slowly dole out their story-- two bottles of wine, no glasses, sitting with their feet in the shallows of the Pond. "We were just supposed to be celebrating being captains," Ransom says. "But we, you know, made out instead."

Everyone tries to pry out more details, figure out the lead-up, the a-ha moment. As far as Bitty can tell, they didn't really need to talk about it. With Ransom and Holster, things just are. They click into place like puzzle pieces.

"I was a little pissed we weren't dating before," Holster says. "Like, we had that attic the  _whole time_ and hooked up  _maybe_ three times."

Jack looks taken aback, and so does Dex, but when he says something Ransom just looks pityingly at Jack. " _Duh,_  man."

Chowder, who has been mostly barreling around the proceedings with a thousand questions a minute, finally hunkers down. "Hey _guys,_ " he calls into the hubbub. "What. About. _Nursey. And Dex._ "

Bitty swivels to look at him. Chowder has his goaltending face on, ready for redirections and half-truths. "I heard your bickering  _all_ through freshman year," he says. "I deserve to hear about the cute things."

Dex is fire-engine red already. "My parents couldn't get me until the next day, and the freshman dorms were closing. So I stayed with Nursey, and. You know."

 _"No,"_ Chowder says.

Bitty worries a little for Dex and Nursey.

"He slept over at my house and it was super hot out but the air wasn't on so we slept in my old treehouse and he kissed me," Nursey finishes hurriedly, distinctly un-chill.

Chowder smiles beatifically at him.

"How was it?" Farmer interjects. It makes sense that she'd be more invested in these two than anybody else; she'd suffered through the arguing at Chowder's side.

Dex is blushing harder, somehow. "It was really great."

Lardo makes a retching noise, but a happy one, if that's possible.

"Gross, but cute," Tango says mildly.

 

Bitty rests his head on Jack's shoulder, watches Ransom interrupt Holster with a kiss, sees Jack and Shitty smile at each other in just a little bit of apology.  _Got your back,_ he thinks nonsensically.

"Excuse me," Whiskey says, standing up and pushing his chair in.

"No  _way,_ " Farmer says, still looking a little overwhelmed by what she's started.

"No, I just wanted to say congratulations to all of you. And I'd stay longer, but," and Tango is already reaching into the air for a fist bump, "there's a boy called Foxtrot I need to see across the street."

 


End file.
